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UNHEALTHY PRACTICES: A Show of Disgust


  • east window SOUTH 4949 Broadway Unit 102-C Boulder, Colorado 80304 United States (map)

east window SOUTH will host UNHEALTHY PRACTICES: A Show of Disgust, an international group exhibit on the theme of disgust, curated by Todd Edward Hermann.

Opening reception:
April 7, 2022
6:30-8:00pm MST

Following the reception the gallery will be open by appointment only until further notice.

Schedule your visit HERE


UNHEALTHY PRACTICES: A Show of Disgust

Curated by Todd Herman

DISGUST is often seen as the bridge between our moral imperatives and the wilds of survival; the cusp of emotion and instinct. Activated in response to what we perceive or imagine as revolting, sick, infectious, diseased, contaminated and thereby threatening, disgust signals our awareness of a division between when we feel safe and when we do not; between when the many facets of our identity and society are stable or insecure.

During the recent pandemic, our collective experiences of disgust have been heightened whether we’ve been consciously or unconsciously aware of it. We have borne witness to damaging rhetorics attempting to conflate those who we perceive as different from ourselves, socially, culturally, politically, sexually, religiously, in age or ability, with vectors of physical or moral contamination. To be clear, this project aims to confront, subvert and transform these prejudices, not reinforce them.

The images and texts which comprise this international group exhibit freely explore issues of bodily function, ownership, control, choice or lack thereof. We see works grappling with violated physical and social borders and hierarchies; the violation of gender boundaries and fluidity; notions of contagion, purity, wellness, disease and how such constructs may be used to ostracize unwanted members of various social groups. What do these representations of our bodies, belongings and psyches, seen through the lens of disgust, really mean to us, that we should impose such powerful and dangerous abstractions upon them? What roles can disgust play in re-shaping other less negative social interactions and in constructing social values that are in turn supportive of those interactions?

The often volatile emotions expressed through the works in this project make it easy to assume that the only story they tell is one of adversarial engagement and oppression. However, is it possible that through these many evocations of violated personal and collective borders, a peculiar sense of solidarity is being revealed? For when an out-group, seen from any side, becomes so close as to be indiscernible from ourselves isn't that when it becomes most threatening?